next meeting, new cleanup issues

[Kent M Pitman <KMP@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>]

i think that some of the problem with poor work at meetings is due to
people not seeing the stuff early enough to come prepared.  this can
be addressed by getting stuff distributed as early as possible.

some of the problems are due to people not doing their homework.  this
has to be addressed by individual members according to their conscience.

some problems are due to people not expressing their concerns about an
issue.  this is due both to not getting enough lead time for discussion
to take place (which is easily fixable if we get stuff circulated soon)
and to people not taking the time to respond with a hint about their 
concerns (this is trickier to fix).  if everyone who has doubts or concerns
about an issue would at least respond with those doubts/concerns so that
surprise roadblocks are not seen for the first time at a meeting, that
will help.

i think that some people are not taking the cleanup process seriously
any more because they think that no more cleanups supposed to be getting
accepted.  my personal understanding is that the door is only closed to 
cleanups involving new features, and is still open to anything which 
is a bug fix.  this is critical to fixing things which are going to keep
us from getting through public review, so i hope that people continue to
treat new cleanups with the necessary seriousness.

and perhaps some people are just a little burnt out after the length of
this project.  i wouldn't want to encourage this, but at the same time 
i think we should recognize that this is part of the price of a long project
like this and we shouldn't expect everything to be 100%.

btw, i agree that we have not gotten satisfactory note-taking on one or two 
issues per meeting but overall it's not been too bad.  this seems like a
mechanical problem which should have a straightforward mechanical solution.
perhaps we can make someone responsible for reading back a consolidated 
version of any heavily amended issues at the end of the meeting for final 
ratification.  but even if we get out of the meeting with only 95% of
the issues resolved that we thought we'd resolved, we're still better
off than if we devote half the meeting to policy issues and end up with
100% of things resolved--but at only 50% efficiency.

bottom line, i for one hope that we don't waste the meeting with 
meta-conversation and that we just buckle down and deal with the hard
technical issues.  this in-person time is critical to resolving the hard
issues.